The Faces of a Double-Sided Coin
by SuperFreakeh
Summary: Selection into the most prestigious school of espionage may seem like a blessing, but blessings have disguises, too. Dave and Karkat have to navigate this new world, where everything is hidden under cloak and dagger, and rekindle the love they once had. But finding love is hard in this world, especially if you're pitted against one another. Rated M for language, violence, and smut.
1. Prologue

**Hey! SuperFreakeh here. Welcome to the Prologue of "The Faces of a Double-Sided Coin". It's going to be a long, fun ride, but be warned. Included in this fanfic will be: heavy language, depictions of violence, x-rated scenes, backstabbing, and Powerpuff Girl-shaped ice cream. Oh, and spying. Chill! -SF**

-o-

A touch in the dark.

Heated, roaming hands grace over every surface. The tension builds as the rest of reality seems to fade away into the fog of lust that crowds the room.

It is suffocating. Breaths play off of each other as the climax draws ever nearer.

He pulls him closer in that fatally final moment and a name is unwillingly ripped from his throat.

They collapse together and finally feel the stifling heat of the room. It is too hot to move and the afterglow basks them in a soothing cool for now.

Their minds finally sobering up, he raises the courage to ask a question that had settled on his mind many a time.

"Will you remember me forever?" So small, so vulnerable. His lip, now bruised, quivers unmistakably in the dim light of a desk lamp.

The other goes taut for a moment then relaxes. "You're not one I would forget," he murmurs, and in this moment, he means it.

_But a year later, he was gone. And I wanted it to stay that way._

**Oh yeah, also included will be the author's inability to keep track of present tense vs. past tense. Heh. Oops. **


	2. Chapter 2

**That was a fast update, no? Don't get used to it.**

-o-

_ It's too early to be dealing with this shit_. It's not even eight in the morning and already the profanities are slipping out of Dave's thoughts and into his mouth. "Dammit," he mumbles again as he stretches an arm over to his bed stand to pick up the phone that had been incessantly calling him since seven.

"Sup," he offers as his most formal greeting. The caller ID recognizes the number as Private Name/Private Number. The line only projects muffled shuffling sounds and a couple inaudible conversations that one could classify as generic office dialogue.

Finally, "Dave Strider?" a woman's voice asks timidly, as though she should worry for her safety if she got the number wrong. Dave responds with a not terribly compliant grunt. "Oh, thank goodness. I've been trying to get a hold of you for the better part of an hour," she laughs weakly.

"Yeah. Sorry 'bout that. Who am I talking to?"

"Oh, excuse me. My name is classified for now but I am here to inform you that you have just been selected to participate in a wonderful opportunity," she says a bit too gleefully for this ungodly hour.

Dave attempts to rub the last remnants of sleep out of his eyes, hearing the woman but not understanding. "Uh huh, you're saying I won like a prize or something?"

"Not exactly. I said you have been _chosen_ to partake in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!"

He hums. _This bitch is probably a fraud, _he thinks, and not even his thoughts are making an attempt to be polite. "Hmm. Nope, not interested. Thanks for waking me up this early though. I probably needed that."

Frantic shuffling in the background and the shouts of what might be a supervisor is heard. "N-no, I'll get him!" Dave only raises an eyebrow, knowing she can't see. "No, sorry, Mr. Strider. I meant that you really should take this opportunity, it's—"

"Once in a lifetime. Sorry lady, but unless it's bucketloads of cash or an unlimited supply of crappy foodstuffs, then I'm not interested."

He moves to put the phone back in the receiver when the woman raises her voice a bit more. "It _is_ bucketloads of cash! Essentially, I mean. It's a scholarship, okay?" His silence on the other end must encourage her. "The University is offering you an all-expenses-paid education for your senior year! Depending on how you use it, it could be worth millions."

That caught his attention. "So…" he starts thinking aloud. "You must'a known I fuckin' hated my current university and can't seem to get a job worth shit, so now you're offering me a really fantastic deal at your university. Too good to be true, lady."

"It might be too good, but it's one hundred percent true."

He thinks harder, weighing the facts. Fact: his shitty liberal arts college wasn't getting him anywhere. Fact: he was two months overdue on rent due to his roommate skipping out in the night. Fact: life sucked, and getting a free education worth millions sounded really fucking cool. Even if it was fake, at least it would be something different.

"Okay. How do I make this happen?"

He can almost hear her relieved smile on the other end as she says, "On your cell phone, there should already be some instructions…"

-o-

Karkat was an early to bed, early to rise kind of person. He learned from past mistakes and decided to stop being a fuckass and start actually sleeping…during the day. Yeah, he was a night owl, some habits die hard. All of his friends, the few close ones he has, know to not wake him before five in the evening.

So what asshole was waking him at _seven in the morning?_

There was only one way to find out.

…sadly, Karkat had no interest in finding out. Rolling over in his comforter, he shut out the noise and slept soundly for another couple hours until it reached about noon, when he might get up to acquire a midnight snack.

Guess those bastards knew more about his habits than he thought.

A shrill ring of the telephone, promptly at noon, wakes him again. Grumbling, he resigns himself to answer the Private Name/Private Number (not something he did often, seeing as how it sounded pretty shady to have a private name like that) and stretches until his limbs felt they were able to move from the bedroom to the kitchenette.

"What," he offers in greeting.

"Oh, hello!" a cheery voice picks up. It's a woman's voice, and if he didn't know better he'd think there was a hint of relief in her voice. "May I speak to Mr. Vantas?"

Karkat thinks he could be polite to this woman, who got up at this ungodly hour just to speak to him, but his sleep pattern has just been screwed with and he's really not in the mood to put forth the effort of being nice. "This is he. What the hell do you want?"

That…came out nastier than he thought. Mentally, he shrugs. At least his grammar was good.

The woman doesn't seem shaken, however, and begins her speech. "I am here to inform you, Mr. Vantas, that you have been selected to be a part of an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!"

_What._

"Exciting, isn't it?" she giggles, as she waits for his response.

This time, words come out of his mouth and he makes no move to stop them. "Lady," he begins, agitation breaking through rows of strangely pointed teeth. "Did you get me up this goddamn early in the afternoon to tell me that I won a shitty telemarketer prize of some sort? Because let me tell you, as it _clearly_ states on my voicemail—which I'm pretty fuckin' sure you heard because you already tried to call me this morning—_I_ _do not accept telemarketer 'bargains' or whatever shit you have to offer_." He takes a breath. "So, I will ask you in the politest way my sleep-deprived frontal lobe can muster: stop calling me and hang up." Whew, that was long-winded and strangely liberating.

He expects the woman to have hung up by now, because this tactic usually worked with normal salespeople, but for some reason she doesn't. All she says is, "Calm down, Mr. Vantas." Then, mumbling to herself, he can hear, "I knew I should've started this differently…" The woman sighs and Karkat's just the tiniest bit of intrigued now, and he waits for her explanation.

She begins again. "Sorry for that terrible description, Mr. Vantas. What you've 'won', I suppose, is a scholarship. It's an all-expenses-paid scholarship to the finest University in the western hemisphere."

"Wow," he says with as little enthusiasm as he can muster. Really, though, if this thing is legit, it could very well be a life changer.

"I know, right? Also, it's worth millions, if that makes any difference. For some, I guess it does," the woman grumbles.

"Those guys have it wrong," Karkat says mostly to himself. A scholarship. A way out of this overbearing, sterile, shithole of a campus. "Can I have the details on this scholarship?" he asks. "I mean, is this thing legitimate?" His voice is quieter now, he notices. It's as if all his chips are placed on this one deal. He tries to snap himself out of it. It's probably not even real.

"Of course. Now, the University operates a bit differently, so if you promise to cooperate, you should see that your instructions have already been sent to your cell phone…"


	3. Chapter 3

Dave wakes up to an alarm that is not his own.

Mainly because he doesn't own an alarm clock. It's like his body is completely in tune with the flow of time; he simply hasn't ever needed one. But yet again, here he was being woken up at some ungodly hour. This time, however, he could forgive it. He was genuinely excited for this morning.

The morning that his life was going to change, and for once, for the better.

The woman on the phone the other day had clued him in to some very vague details that sounded more than a little sketchy to him. As he stretched and shut off the strange alarm clock he mulled over the events of the past couple days.

-o-

"There should already be some instructions…" He checked his texts on his phone as the woman spoke the directions and, sure enough, there was a text from an odd number that gave a sort of checklist of sorts. He let his eyes scroll down the page as the woman rambled on about "policy" and "body guards" and other bullshit. The first thing on his checklist was something like "sign the release papers" but as he would see as he looked at the stack of mail he compiled a little later, there were no release papers so far. Those would come in a day or two. The second thing listed on the text was "prepare a carry-on". Dave shrugged at this, figuring he could wait to put some shit like sketchbooks and iPods in a duffel. The final instruction was "Thurs. 6 am be ready". He had no idea just what was a part of this "be ready" thing but he was willing to try. And so he said goodbye to the woman and dutifully shambled about the house for the next three days.

-o-

Which brought him here, to the present day. Yesterday, he signed his name on the back of a thick, official-looking packet that had arrived in the mail, not bothering to read much of it. He caught phrases such as "not liable for the death or injury of…" which, admittedly, worried him a bit at the time, but after a couple days of acting like a slug and blowing off the reminders for fall classes, he had come to the conclusion that he didn't care.

As he's pulling on his hoodie of the day, he happens to catch a glimpse outside his apartment window. Down below, seven stories away, is a shining black limousine. A bulky, foreboding-looking man stands just outside the passenger's door, waiting for someone.

Dave gulps. Though the last couple days may have been all sunshine, flowers, and Doritos, having the ominous events that had been eluded to actually occur seems like much more of a nerve-wracking task than he thought.

He slides on some gray skinny jeans and musses at his hair a bit to get it to stay down. A quick look in the mirror reminds him to pop in a piece of gum and slap on his shades as well, and then he picks up his duffel bag, recently filled with magazines, notebooks, CDs, and a neck pillow (because fuck if those weren't the comfiest). He steps into oversized, red hi-tops and takes a final look at his apartment as he passes through each room.

This place holds a lot of memories.

It was his first apartment, to go with his first college. It was where he first got laid, where he had his first hangover, where he first started to regret waking up in the morning. No matter how many wall decals he placed (to his roommate's chagrin) and no matter how many times he rearranged the furniture to meet his moods, the place never felt home. Not even the people in it made it feel like home.

His close friends were few and far between, and scattered across the globe. In fact, he became much more attached to his turntables and laptops and general electronics than any human that had stepped foot in his apartment. When his roommate left, he decided with the tiniest bit of sadness that it wasn't like he could get any emptier.

With a final flip of his bangs, he prayed that his important possessions would somehow make the trip, all while hoping in a strange and twisted way that none of them did. It was indeed strange, the way his mind worked.

He slams the door and knows that the door is probably on its last legs; his stuff was never safe here.

He jogs down the cement stairs, having memorized every crack, stain, and mark of Sharpie vandalism already. He remembers adding his own graffiti not days ago.

He hears the desk manager give him a short word of apparent outrage but he merely gives him the finger and adjusts his bag closer to his hip.

He saunters across the sidewalk to the guard in front of the limo. The guard gives the smallest hint of a nod and opens the door for him.

Dave Strider settles into the vehicle of luxury, accepts the glass of wine extended to him even though the sun has barely risen, and eases into the seat, ready for journey.

-o-

Karkat was having none of that. A natural nocturnal, he had been told by the woman on the phone to "temporarily revert your sleep pattern to one of more usual hours. Trust me, it will help later." Which he did, of course. He didn't want to fuck any of this up, feeling like if he made a mistake the next thing he knew his life savings would be put into a fund for paraplegic manatees and his kidney missing in the morning.

Karkat values his money and his kidneys, so he has been going to bed at midnight and waking up at eight like the nice lady suggested. But it was hard. It was hard and nobody understands. Nobody understands the pain of a nocturnal.

Fortunately, coffee understood. Cappuccino was there for him for three mornings straight and Mocha was there for him for three nights straight. He owes his success to caffeine, and would like to thank the academy as well as this delicious ambrosia of the night-owl gods.

So it is coffee this morning that helps him get up as he shuts off an alarm he doesn't remember setting. But hey, his sleep pattern certainly wasn't improving, so what did it hurt to get up before the sun rises anyway? Pulling himself out of bed one limb at a time, he takes a sip of the stale brew and makes his way to the shower and uses the cold water as an alarm all of its own.

It works, and the smell of mint and vanilla tea (the best scent when it comes to shampoo) wafts up to the bathroom ceiling by the time he's done. He shakes his head, his eyesight becoming clearer by the minute, and makes to find a suitable shirt for the day.

Because today, after all, is going to be a life-changer.

Or so he hopes. The woman on the phone a few days ago wouldn't shut up about the so-called University and all its "properties of prestige and magic" so he had eventually hung up on her and got to checking off everything the text on his phone told him to do.

Karkat realizes that all of his shirts, thanks to his disdainfully low college-influenced budget, are either too large or too short, so he just goes with a comfy sweater he got from a convention years ago and some rather drab sweat pants.

He looks at himself in the mirror. He'll be twenty-three soon. That's close enough to being mid-twenties, right? And after that comes late-twenties, and after that he'll be in his thirties already…

_Gah! Snap out of it!_ There's no time this morning to be a fuckass. There's shit to be done, since apparently a strange alarm clock made it so. Karkat takes a brush to his hair, only half trying to tame its masses, and walks around the room as he does so, looking out over the city from his third-story window.

He still lives in a dorm, never coming out of his shell enough to find a roommate and never finding a good enough job to not need one. But at least he's gotten to keep the same dorm. He pities the person who's going to have to rip poster tape from the walls next year, though. He sets his hairbrush back down, looks at the minimal progress he's made and thinks that perhaps anything is better than having to scrape off the putty that's been holding his posters to the walls for years. As far down the pyramid of luck and wealth and looks as he is, at least he doesn't have to scrape walls. Yet.

Something glinting through the window catches his eye and he makes his way over to it again. A limousine has just pulled up to the curb. A tall, ominous-looking man wearing sunglasses gets out of the limo, then directs his gaze straight at Karkat, who jumps back from the window in surprise.

_Holy fuck. Could he actually see me…?_ A shiver courses throughout his body and he tries to regain his composure. _Probably not_. But it's not solid in the least. The image of sunglasses boring a hole through him is familiar, though, but common sense and a nagging voice in his head tells him to not think about that.

He can only assume that the man is waiting for him. In fact, it's not even an assumption; somehow, Karkat knows this man is his ride to wherever he needs to go next.

He trots over to his backpack in the corner and scoops it up, stuffing it with gum and his cell phone before slinging it over his shoulder. The sweater makes for a bit of a bulky fit, but that's hardly a concern right now. What is a concern right now is the apparent lack of footwear in the dorm at the moment…alright, fuck this, just wear sandals. Karkat grumbles quietly to himself and slips on some sandals over his feet, which already have socks on them. Sure, he may be outfitted today in a sweater, sweat pants, and the infamous socks-and-sandals duo, but he has his classy moments and today is not one of them.

…shut up, he does so have classy moments.

Taking his backpack out the door with him with a sigh, he locks the door behind him (just in case) and treads quietly through the dorm hallways. He reaches the front office and makes himself a cheap, black coffee before nodding at the desk attendant and walking away into the foggy morning.

He can see the limo waiting for him on the curb thirty feet away from him, but he doesn't make a move towards it. Not yet.

He feels cheesy and cliché in every possible way as he turns back towards his dorm hall but he can't help it. This place holds a lot of memories.

It was the first dorm he'd ever been assigned; he never moved. It was where he first brought somebody special home, where he first threw up after a night of drinking, where he first started to regret waking up in the morning. No matter how many people moved in and out of that dorm, they never made an impact. It was as though they were silently coasting along and their presence occasionally happened to overlap into his life. Sometimes, he would get attached to a certain roommate, but they would never stay for long, moving their stuff out just hours after getting their reassignment. He still wasn't sure how that even happened, really. But after a while, he became the automatic yes for the question "Do you have a place I can stay for a while?"

Sometimes, having another person would make him feel happier. But when they left, he felt a sadness that was overshadowed by that fact that it wasn't like he could get any emptier.

What was one more "yes"?

What was one more risk?

He finally forced his feet to move along the pavement, listening to the slap of soles on concrete as he walked.

He approached the guard and was again reminded of the glare of the rising sun on sunglasses.

He slipped into the vehicle and looked for a seat belt to fasten. There wasn't one.

He took a deep breath and leaned his head against the leather seat, declining a complementary glass of wine that was offered to him.

He prays that this journey will be more fulfilling than the last.

**Sobs I wrote so much more for Karkat than I did for Dave... Man, this is turning out to be more dramatic than I intended. Sorry (not sorry).**


	4. Chapter 4

**I'm so sorry...! I can't keep present-tense and past-tense straight (heheh, this goes for the characters too) so I've kind of given up. Just don't concentrate on this and you won't suffer soul-sucking consequences, I promise :3**

His eyelids were getting heavier by the second. It took all his effort to keep them from falling. His knuckles were growing white from the amount of pressure exerted on the leather seats and the wine glass in his grip was appearing more fragile by the second.

Come to think of it, was there something in the wine, or was it just the fact that he had been drinking before breakfast? He tried to shake the thought of having been drugged, but this translated to him literally shaking his head and he quickly found out that it ached to even move.

It dawned on him now that _this was a bad idea. _

But barely another thought crossed his mind before he was out like a light, the dark interior of the limousine crowding him as he lost consciousness.

-o-

He had declined the wine glass offered to him about an hour ago. Actually, he had declined it several times because it had been _offered_ several times, which began to raise suspicion in his mind. Finally, though, the intimidating guy near the front of the limo had seeming given up. But it took only a few minutes later that he noticed the colored lights on the interior lighting up and dancing along the inside.

They swayed to the beat of the faint classic rock wafting from the driver's seat. The lights ran a race in circles around him, rising and falling, flowing together in a cascade of color then crashing down into pixels.

Reds and blues and purple and yellow and green swam together just beyond his eyelashes. The lights ran around him and he felt his vision begin to fail him. It was fine, though. The lights, this beautiful vehicle…he'd make it out okay.

-o-

A push and a shove, something buried deep in the back of his mind told him to stop moving his legs, dammit. Stop walking. Stop saying words you don't know. Don't…don't follow their instructions. But soon his head would hurt again and he would slip back into a state of complacency, his feet moving on their own, one step at a time.

-o-

_How did I get here?_

_Who is that?_

_Who is __**that**__?_

The next thing he knew, he was sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair in a bland conference room where the walls were decorated with complex maps and a handful of whiteboards and a voice droned on and on and on and…

And there was a voice?

Of course. There were people.

He was just one of a dozen people in the room. Guards barricaded a pair of metal doors and a balding speaker in a bow tie and pressed khakis stood at the front of the room, his words melding together like wax in his fuzzy state of mind. But as he grasped the back of his chair and looked around his surroundings, it would seem he was in the middle of a group of spaced-out strangers, all in various stages of confusion similar to his own.

_Is this a nightmare? How did I get here?_ No. Too many questions. He knew the best way to live through this kind of situation was to blend in with the crowd (most of whom looked like they were barely keeping conscious) and find someone he knew. But it would appear this _was_ a nightmare; he knew no one.

He was in a bland conference room, listening to a middle-aged speaker drone on in a monotone voice about something that sounded like "standard government procedure" and this gave him chills, so he chose to ignore it. He examined every inch of the room, trying to find a way he could excuse himself and escape, but it would be no use. He would be caught.

He already stood out for flailing around in his seat like a perfectly able, awake person. The man in front gestured to a crude drawing on the whiteboard of what looked like a gun, a bow and arrow, and some medieval-looking objects.

_What the hell was wrong was this place? This is a dream, right? _He tried to reason with himself, slumping back in his chair so as to blend in just a little with the comatose audience. _That's right. _He thought assuring thoughts. _This is a dream, which would explain the uncreative and generic setting, and these are people I've probably seen on the street somewhere when I was awake. That would explain why I don't recognize anybody._

A sound theory, he thought.

He settled back, ready to wake up any time. He swung his feet slightly, being just a bit too short for this type of chair.

His foot kicked his backpack, and his first thought was, _Hope I didn't fuckin' break anything._

His second thought was, _I brought this from home._

_This is no dream_.

The backpack was real, and when the doors at the back of the room clanked open and the speaker looked expectantly at the drowsy guy being dragged into a seat, he realized he recognized this stranger.

Slim shoulders hunched, lanky legs trailing slightly on the floor, and a ratty duffel bag that had no doubt been some kind of pristine designer brand at some point, he knew this guy even without seeing his face.

A guard made sure the man didn't fall out of the chair while being under the influence of whatever had shut down his mind, and positioned him upright on the back of the seat, pushing up his sunglasses as they threatened to fall.

No doubt about it. Karkat was seeing Dave Strider for the first time in four years.

And soon after being deposited in his chair, Dave began to wake up and adjust where he sat. Yawning and stretching, his joints cracked satisfyingly as he took a cursory glance over the room. It wasn't long before his gaze locked with a particular stranger's, though. And from where he was sitting, Karkat could see Dave's eyebrows—one pierced, he noticed—shoot up over his sunglasses. Dave turned completely to him, his mouth agape in the most obscene way.

_This was no dream_.

Dave was seeing Karkat Vantas for the first time in four years.

Their lives were once more overlapping at the most inconvenient of times.

But it was time that would tell whether it would last.


	5. Message from SF

**It would appear that I've finally had my first mental breakdown of the school year. As a result, my family is urging me to quit Internet distractions for a while. So for the time being, I'll be on hiatus from FFN, Tumblr, and other sites. I'll still write, but will be unable to post updates until further notice. I'm having a tough time and I've tried my hardest to keep on a smiling face, but I guess tonight it didn't work and I hope I'll be back soon. Thanks for all the love I get, guys. I'll be back soon. -SF**


	6. Please Read (Message from Me)

**Hey there! **

**I bet you thought I sounded really chipper with that "Hey there," thing I just did. Well, it's easy to fake stuff on paper (or in this case, a combined collection of pixels) but right now, I'm not chipper at all. I'm, like, exactly the opposite of that. I'm handling my issues as best I can but it's proving to not be enough, and further measures are about to be taken. Hopefully, I'll get better soon. Thanks for all your kind messages, it truly makes my day to see new ones in my PM box :3 **

**For now, however, I will be officially going on hiatus. I have a lot of thinking to do about my future and what I want to do in life. If you have any advice, here's the really simplified version of what's going down right now:**

**I've been a high achieving, Gifted and Talented, A-grade student my whole life. I've also been a violinist my whole life, too. Both of these have dominated every ounce of breath so far and it caught up to me a while ago. Now, I have different interests, goals, and motivations, and those clash deeply with what I've been my whole life thus far. I know everyone goes through this as some point, but it is especially painful for me right now, and I'd like to get healthier, mentally.**

**(No, I'm not depressed, paranoid, bipolar, etc. I'm anxious. Anxious! And over-thinking. That too. Imagine how hard you have to think during a test you didn't study for. Now imagine putting that same amount of thinking, plus 20, into every thought and decision you make. That's how my brain has functioned for 16+ years. It's like running a car on the highest speed possible at all times, not letting it rest or get it maintained. That car is gonna break down, ya know.)**

**This seems like a ramble and I apologize for not bringing the new "Faces of a Double-Sided Coin" chapter (which is actually written hallelujah) but know that every Sunday, I try to write up a chapter or two. And actually, I've been writing a fluffy JohnDave fic, called "The Librarian's Assistant", on my phone which I will publish as soon as I am able.**

**Holy moly thanks for the follows, favorites, reviews, reads...I can't thank you enough. My tumblr is i-havent-been-the-same-since-i and I truly haven't been the same since I started uploading these, thinking no one would read them. So thanks :D**

**That's all I have. Is is appropriate to set a goal of publishing the new FoaDSC chapters in...3 weeks? 4? I don't know. Maybe then come and let me know that I have some explaining to do. **

**Thanks much, and Chill! (Dave and Karkat will get back to their shenanigans soon enough!)**

**SuperFreakeh**


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